The current process to learn CubeSat controls is vastly conceptual for students from the high school, undergraduate, and even graduate levels. Building a testbed in a gimbal connected to the internet would allow students the opportunity to test their designs, theories, and software on real CubeSat hardware in real-time.
The goal of this project is to design and manufacture a 1U CubeSat testbed for autonomous control systems utilizing reaction wheels. The testbed will include three separate reaction wheels each mounted on its own respected axis of the rotation plane to control the attitude in 3 degrees of freedom. The end goal of the 1U CubeSat testbed is to be integrated into a website where anyone online can upload their own controls algorithm and watch a live stream of how their algorithm performs on hardware in real-time.
CubeSat attitude control is to enable the CubeSat to point in the desired direction that is set. In the classroom, learning the math behind developing an attitude control algorithm for any spacecraft is math-intensive. It is common that students struggle to develop the connection between the math they are learning and how it could actually be applied to a real-world application. A use case for the testbed would be to integrate into the classroom while learning the math behind attitude controls. For example, the professor can upload individual lesson examples code to easycontrols.org with the 1U CubeSat testbed selected, then display the livestream of the physical testbed to the whole class. Enabling students visual-spatial improvement between the high-level conceptual math to a physical system for spacecraft attitude controls.